


World War B - Prologue

by darrenzieger



Series: World War B [1]
Category: Bob's Burgers (Cartoon)
Genre: F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-21
Updated: 2019-04-25
Packaged: 2020-01-23 05:51:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,464
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18543595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darrenzieger/pseuds/darrenzieger
Summary: The Belchers and a handful of friends and neighbors have endured and survived the Zombie Apocalypse (or something like it) - which is winding down as the story opens. Now they must focus on rebuilding their shattered psyches and what little they can of their shattered lives.Starts out incredibly dark, and given the premise, it's not going to be a laugh riot; but it should lighten up gradually and not take too long to get to the point where what is funny and charming and idiosyncratic about the characters has a chance to shine through.





	1. Chapter 1

TINA

There are no words. Trust me - I know a lot of words.

But what word describes the loss of almost everything you know? Your friends. Your community. Your culture.

Your species.

What _emotion_ even scratches the surface. 

Check your thesaurus if you like. I’ll wait. But I don’t think you’ll find the right word in the English language. If it’s out there, it’s probably in German.

 

Moving on...

 

It’s been 9 months since it started. No one ever figured out where it came from, this thing that isn’t a virus or a bacteria or a weapon of chemical warfare; this...protein- or enzyme-but-not-that-either that seemingly has no relation to anything ever observed by scientists across all disciplines. I read an article describing all the ways it didn’t fit into our ecology, but honestly, I didn’t understand a word of it.

The article, and many other articles, as well as statements from scientists and researchers at the CDC, strenuously pointed out that there was no reason it absolutely _couldn’t_ , technically, have a terrestrial origin - it could have come, for example, from a long sealed-off cave, mile beneath the ground, that had developed its own, mostly anaerobic ecosystem where evolution occurred separately from the rest of the world. Such caves had been discovered in recent years, and the organisms they contained were unlike anything ever before encountered.

It was a reasonable hypothesis. There were a number of reasonable hypotheses being floated in the scientific community. Maybe one of them was correct.

But there was nothing for it. Scientists - what do they know, right? The rest of us knew the truth: It was the work of aliens plotting to rid the world of humans and take the planet for themselves - if you believed the conspiracy theorists); or at least of extraterrestrial origin: the Earth passed through a huge cloud of the stuff - likely of interstellar origin - blanketing the planet with alien organic material our bodies could not fight off - if you believed theories pulled out of more rational asses.

The latter is more plausible of course, but even if it’s true, it turns out that some people _can_ fight it off. About two percent of human beings seem to be immune.

You do the math.

OK, fine, I’ll do the math. Or, rather, the CDC did the math. They projected that by the time the... whatever it is... runs its course - which they estimated would be around now - there will be about one hundred million people left alive worldwide.

Sure, that sounds like a big number, until you remember that less than a year ago, there were over seven billion.

Don’t even try to assimilate that fact. I’ve been trying for six months - since the CDC announced that unfathomably sad estimate and went silent forever - and it’s impossible.

It’s like playing a video game where your character reaches the edge of the playable part of the environment and if you try to make them keep going, they just walk in place, blocked by nothing but virtual thin air.

So just don’t bother.

It’s also hard to accept the truth when so little has changed, at least physically, in Seymour’s Bay. The east side of town, from Wonder Wharf to the western edge of the pre-1950s development, still has electricity, Internet (to the extent that there’s anything to browse to), and cable (technically. There’s no actual programming to see).

Even Netflix, Amazon Video and Hulu are still available. Daryl explained to me how that was possible (something about “CDNs” and “microservices” and “redundancy”...I got the gist of it, but it mostly flew over my head.

A week after we had that conversation, Daryl was dead. That was about four months ago. I remember he was more angry than scared when he got sick. He’d survived for months. He was sure he was going to make it. It wasn’t fair! It Just! Wasn’t! Fair!

It wasn't. It isn’t. It’s not fair. Why would it be? Normal life wasn’t ever fair, why would the end of the world be?

The only thing holding me together is my family. Resistance to the contagion seems to be a genetic trait, with some exceptions, and the Belchers - at least the ones in my household - have come through the plague unharmed. Physically. I hope there are a lot of therapists among the survivors, because the remaining hundred or so million human beings on earth are all going to have whatever condition is the next one past PTSD. PTTTTTTTTTSD?

 

Hmm... here’s a word - a German word, of course: Weltschmerz. Literally “World Pain.” OK, that’s a contender. One prominent philosopher defined it as “a mood of weariness or sadness about life arising from the acute awareness of evil and suffering.” (Yes, Wikipedia is still up.)

But no. No cigar. On the one hand, we’re all feeling that way, intensely, every moment of every day. On the other, we’d all experienced it from time to time before the apocalypse, so it doesn’t really cover it.

I’ll keep searching (I know I said not to bother; but I’m a writer. I love the language so much, I can’t help it). Still, eventually, I’ll have to give up and coin a new word. Sometimes a neologism is the only option.

But I digress. Let’s talk about the Zombie Apocalypse.

 

First off: in point of fact, there are no zombies. Never were, never will be. It’s not a thing that happens.

To clarify, let’s establish what a zombie is, by the standard, pop culture definition.

Zombies are animated corpses. They are the remains of people who have already died and been buried and mourned, compelled by voodoo or contagion or George A. Romero to rise from their graves and shamble across the landscape in search of - for some reason I have never heard adequately explained - human brains to feast upon. And if they get you, you yourself become one of them.

It's been suggested that modern zombie tales of the "[X] of the Living Dead" variety are a metaphor for the suburban experience. For the conformity that many of Romero's generation witnessed in 1950s America. But again, I digress.

So: zombies as we understand them.

Seeing a walking corpse - particularly one that was after your brain and would turn you into a zombie yourself if it bit you - would be incomprehensibly terrifying. You would experience the kind of horror and revulsion that could kill you before the creature got within a hundred feet of you. Surely, it would be the most mind-mangling thing imaginable.

But the reality is far worse. Here’s what the - I'm going to refer to it as "the plague" for convenience - does:

The first sign of infection is a change to the victim’s irises, which take on dozens of iridescent colors. It would be beautiful, actually, if it wasn’t for all that comes next.

Once the eyes change, the victim has approximately 24 to 36 hours to put their affairs in order, because at that point, the change begins.

The body tenses up and contorts, muscles straining in unnatural ways, sometimes even breaking bones. The skin becomes waxy. The heart rate increases insanely, to about 300 bpm, but somehow the organ doesn’t give out. The victims shake and convulse.

Immediately, they lose the ability to communicate, through speech or any other method. Unless you count the screams. The ungodly screams.

After a few minutes, even their screams die down. They also become completely unresponsive to speech or any other external stimuli.

No one knows if the victim’s mind is completely gone at that point, or if they’re still in there, trapped inside their wretched, tortured bodies, in inexpressible, inconsolable agony.

Look, I’m not really religious - except maybe in a perfunctory, Christmas tree-decorating way - and if I were, I’d be too angry at God right now to be on speaking terms with him. Or her, Or it. Or them.

But in the past nine months I have prayed a hundred times, in earnest, to anyone currently monitoring this sector, that by the time the change is complete, if not before, the victim’s mind is completely gone. That there's no one home. Because the alternative is unthinkable.

But there’s no way to know.

Within an hour or two of the change, they begin moving. Crawling. They are mostly aimless, changing course randomly, at irregular intervals. Occasionally they will follow someone, which is creepy, but it doesn’t seem to be a conscious process.

On the - let’s just call it the bright side - they’re harmless. Weak as newborn kittens, slow, and with no interest in attacking anyone or anything. Eventually, usually within a week, they’re dead, usually of dehydration - that is, unless someone with a gun and a strong stomach euthanizes them. Or some well-meaning idiot prolongs their suffering by giving them water.

Now, hearing this described, anyone with the slightest iota of compassion would be horrified, would weep for the suffering of their fellow human beings. 

But to watch someone, right before you, going through that unimaginable fear, horror, and pain, that is... indescribable. And if it's someone you love... What words would suffice?

Again, if they exist, they’re probably in German. Ask a concentration camp survivor - if you can find one.

By the end of the first month, I’d used up my personal capacity to experience horror, or at least it had been temporarily burned out. My supply of despair, however, seems bottomless.

Most of my friends are gone. One by one they came to me, their eyes swirling with alien colors, and said their goodbyes. We cried on each other’s shoulders. Screamed and pounded our hands bloody on the ground at the cold hatred of the universe. Some took their leave of me and I never saw them again.

But some returned, usually crawling past my home, their tortured bodies distorted, grotesque. It was obscene, in the core, non-sexual meaning of the word. I would turn away, blood draining from my face, heart pounding.

I’d run to my room, hide under the covers, and scream into my pillow until my throat was raw. Sometimes, when I was done, spent, there would be flecks of blood on my pillow.

The first few times this happened, Mom and Dad ran into my room, convinced I was dying or something. After that, though it pained them terribly, they let me scream in peace.

 

There were so many of them. Kids I’d gone to school with for a decade, most of them casual acquaintances, some of them mean kids who had taunted me and hurt my feelings a hundred times.

I wept and screamed my throat for every one of them, even the ones I hated. If there hadn’t been many times when they appeared in groups and I could scream for several at once, I probably would have destroyed my voice permanently, or even died of a throat infection.

I wanted to help them, but of course, I couldn’t. Not if I couldn’t bring myself to borrow a gun and...

 

 _Oh, God, Jimmy Junior! Surely I should have found the strength to help_ him _. But I failed him. I failed..._

 

_The Pestos had disappeared a few days before. I assumed that, like most locals, they’d left town - though realistically, since it was a plague in name only, there wasn’t anyplace any safer to go._

_B_ _ut they had in fact been hiding in their home, I later found out, getting sick, one after the other._

_Jimmy Jr. got out somehow - maybe he had left under his own power, choosing to spare his family the ordeal of watching his transformation._

_One morning about a month into the End of All Things, I saw him crawling down the street, his tortured form an affront to all that was good and decent. I wanted to run upstairs and have my usual screaming fit, but I knew it wouldn’t be enough. I knew if I went upstairs, I’d go straight to the bathroom, find a razor, and slit my wrists. I also knew I’d regret it immediately, but it would be too late._

_No, I had to do the impossible._

_Moving almost as mindlessly as Jimmy himself, I went to him. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him, or even stoop down to look in his eyes - I feared if I gazed into them, it would be last thing I ever did, that I would be trapped inside that moment for the rest of my life._

_So I just walked beside him. And I talked. Chatted at him, really. About how crazy everything was now, about old times good and bad, about our first kiss, about his mus-oems, about Wonder Wharf. I think I talked for ten minutes, so detached from reality that the whole thing didn’t even have an air of unreality for me, if that makes any sense._

_Then he stopped moving for a moment - likely about to change direction - and I forced myself to sit down next to him and face the truth - just in case he was still in there._

_I’m so sorry, Jimmy. I’m sorry this is happening to you. I’m sorry I don’t have the courage to put you out of your misery.”_

_At this moment, the reality of the situation finally hit me._

_I was talking to Jimmy Jr., the boy who gave me first kiss under a disco ball in my family restaurant; the boy who had gone to great trouble to give me a trampoline kiss one Valentine’s day; who had been a fixture in my life since elementary school; whose amazing butt had fueled a thousand fantasies and hundreds of pages of erotic friend fiction; Jimmy. Beautiful, infuriating, commitment-allergic Jimmy._

_Now, that Jimmy - or whatever was left of him - was crawling, body straining and twisted, down Ocean Avenue, going into the final stages of the illness that was wiping out most of humanity._

_It was impossible. It was horror and science fiction. Not reality. It couldn’t be. These things Don’t. Actually. Happen._

_Nuclear war I could accept. An asteroid collision was plausible. A plague - a_ normal _plague: bubonic, black, superflu... sure, that could happen._

_But seriously? The Zombie Apocalypse? Come on, this is bullshit. It has to be some awful nightmare inspired by watching one of those disgusting, gory zombie flicks Louise loves._

_But I had long since given up hoping to wake up. This was_ Reality _._

_THIS WAS REALLY HAPPENING. RIGHT NOW. ON OCEAN AVENUE ON A BEAUTIFUL, CLEAR SUNNY DAY._

_I blacked out and came to lying on my side in the middle of the street, looking directly into Jimmy Junior’s impossible eyes._

_Mercifully, I was too weak to sob uncontrollably, as I wanted to, needed to, so I was able to address my old boyfriend clearly, in case any part of him remained. “I just want you to know that I loved you, Jimmy. You could be a jerk sometimes, and kind of led me on. But kids are jerks sometimes. God, I’m sorry I even brought it up._

" _I loved your dancing - I think you could have become a famous dancer if the world hadn’t ended and everything.” Now I wept, tears running sideways down my face onto the asphalt. But I went on. “You deserved so much better than this. You deserved everything good in life. You deserved a life.”_

_I could say nothing more, could not move, could do nothing but lie there, particles of street detritus scratching my ear as I breathed, staring into Jimmy Junior’s beautiful, horrifying, and (sweet Jesus let them truly be) vacant eyes._

_Finally, he turned and began to crawl in a new direction._

_I rose. What was left to say? Too much, probably. A lifetime worth of thoughts I'd had and would have had if not for the interference of the end of the world, currently in progress._

_I looked down at his tortured figure. Emotions spent - maybe forever, it felt like - I told him calmly, “I’m sorry I’m too much of a coward to put you out of your misery, and I’ll probably never forgive myself for that. But I think it’s almost over, Jimmy. You can rest soon._

 " _I love you,” I said finally, turned, and headed for home. It took more willpower than I thought I possessed to not look back._

 

[Half an hour and a crying jag I had to rehydrate from later]

That was the worst, I’d thought at the time, the worst it could possibly get. That was the moment my soul left my body, flipping me off on the way out.

But it was hardly the end. There was the ongoing fear - a background hiss one could never quite tune out - that the plague would strike Mom or Dad. Or Gene. Or Louise. That at any time I would see the obscenely beautiful colors in their eyes, and I'd have to kill one of them. Or watch them suffer the... no, I can't even express the thought.

And it would have to be me. Particularly if it were Gene or Louise who got sick. Mom or Dad couldn't do it. Not without turning the gun on themselves. Even if we did it the civilized way - a bottle full of opioids; no mess - it would be the end of them to even hand her the pills. How do even ask a parent to euthanize their own young child? They'd be dead before their child's body was taken to the mass grave that once was the Wagstaff Elementary School playground. For the generous souls who have taken it upon themselves to transport the dead to their final resting place, it would be three for the price of one.

So it would have to be me. And honestly, I don't think I'd fare any better.

I wouldn't actually off myself. I don't have the cojones. And I have an overwhelming desire to live to tell the tale. Someone has to tell it.

But there would be nothing left of me. Nothing of value to anyone, including myself. I'd be a zombie - of the classic variety - shuffling through life until someone dismembers me or kills me with fire.

And of course, the was the equal possibility that  _I_ could get the pretty eyes at any moment. 

Then, at least, I could go off and swallow a month's worth of Oxycodone in private. 

 

Meanwhile, there were so many dying friends I couldn’t save or even comfort. A hundred acquaintances. And most of the thousands of strangers that had formed the social backdrop of my life.

 

And one I can’t talk about yet.

 

It got to the point where the euthanizing and suicidal gunshots - which became more and more frequent as the months wore on - were actually comforting. One more person out of misery, one less crawler to despair over. A Bizarro World lullaby.

There are more stories to tell about the last eight months, and maybe I’ll find the strength to tell them, eventually. I can’t believe I managed to talk about Jimmy Junior. Like a sudden attack of projectile vomiting, it was shocking and nauseating, but it feels good to have gotten it out.

I’ll be right back after a word from our sponsors.


	2. Chapter 2

TINA

So here’s where things stand:

The Belcher family is alive and well. We may be the only family in town that hasn’t lost anyone, though most of my surviving friends have siblings and/or a parent or two above ground.

 

_Jesus God. "My surviving friends."  Even now, after 9 months of continuous, every-waking-moment-plus-nightmares horror; after Daryl, and Jimmy Jr., and... no, I can't. Not yet - After all that, every time I say or write something like "my surviving friends," I get dizzy. My heart drops into my guts at terminal velocity. I get nauseous. I stare at the words in disbelief._

_This is hell, nor am I out of it._

_Sorry. I'll try to stay on point. Just take it as read that behind the scenes, I'm periodically losing my shit._

 

Anyway. Where things stand.

For the moment, our home, like most buildings on the east side of town, still has electrical power. We can’t count on the power grid to function much longer without human supervision, however, so we’re savoring the air conditioning, our Android tablets, and the refrigerator, while we have them.

The local food supplies, even with the drastically reduced population, won’t last very long, and the perishables didn't last out the first month.

We’re still trying, all of us, to figure out a solution for that, but no one here has any expertise in farming, fishing, or any other basic food production skills. I try not to think about it.

 

I try not to think about a lot of things.

 

I try not to think about the three mass graves in the Wagstaff Elementary schoolyard, currently full to the top with the corpses of people found dead in the streets, and the suicides found in at least half of the local residences. A number of civic-minded individuals took their own lives in the schoolyard itself, to save others the trouble of carrying their bodies across town.

 

I try not to think about it. Or the fact that a fourth mass grave is being dug as I speak. 

 

I try not to think about Jimmy Pesto, Jimmy Jr. and Andy - which is difficult because Ollie, the only surviving Pesto, is living with us, crashing on the couch, desperately trying to figure out how to exist, to function on even the most rudimentary level, without Andy.

He is bereft of half of his soul, and at times practically catatonic. Some days we can’t get him to eat. I worry that he will never recover. I worry that one night he’ll just forget how to breathe - or forget to want to breathe - and we’ll have to carry him to Wagstaff, where we’ll wrap him in tarp or bubble wrap - whatever’s available - and lower him gently into the new mass grave - or the first one, to be with Andy.

 

[5 minutes of hyperventilating later...]

 

On a more positive note, we have another new roommate - Rudy Stieglitz, who, orphaned, has moved in with us. He sleeps with Louise -- in both the literal and euphemistic sense.

I’m so happy for them. I mean, 13 is a ridiculously young age to turn in you V-card; but, as everyone but Louise realized years ago, they are clearly soulmates. Louise loves Rudy with a ferocity that is sometimes a little scary. Rudy worships her.

And honestly, why the hell shouldn't they make love? The society that established the standards for sexual behavior that they are violating is dead, and whatever replaces it will have different rules, different mores.

Sure, the first time Louise and Rudy got it on and Mom and Dad heard the sounds coming from Louise’s little closet/bedroom, they kind of lost it.

I stopped them from barging in and interruptus-ing their youngest daughter’s coitus. But I had caught them just outside her door, moments before she had what sounded like one of the greatest orgasms in the history of sex. This was no  _petit mort_. This was, to switch, languages, an  _Orgasmus Giganticus Profundis._

My little sister is _loud._

And, I thought with great admiration, Rudy is clearly The Shit, as the youngsters say.

 

My folks had mutual walking nervous breakdowns for about a week. To their credit, they - with great effort - managed to accept the new normal, at least intellectually. They knew Louise and Rudy were deeply in love. Moreover, they knew that Rudy would die for their baby without a second thought; and he was observably keeping Louise sane in the face of universal horror.

He was a calming influence on all of us. He was everything they had always hoped Louise’s future husband would be. He was family.

But at the same time, she was their baby, their youngest. And she was all of six months into the puberty she had long dreaded.

Under normal circumstances, if one of their kids - particularly one of their daughters - had become sexually active at 13, they would have been terrified for her well-being, and think of it as a parenting failure on their part.

Circumstances were, of course, as far from normal as mathematically possible. So they let her be. But for a few days they were freaking out to the point of being unable to function. Dad couldn’t couldn’t carry on a normal conversation, couldn’t cook(!). Mom went into her long-established freakout behavior of cleaning the house obsessively. I felt bad for her, but it was kind of comforting to watch. It was a familiar thing from our old life. Normalcy.

Unfortunately, there were many times that, just as Mom and Dad were calming down, coming back to life, Louise and Rudy - who really should have found somewhere better for their trysts - would have another round of loud sex, and Mom and Dad would regress again.

It’s taken a while, but now they’re totally fine with it. I mean, how long could they remain in shock about their daughter’s joyful sex life when people were dying all around them; when they had recently joined Mort for his own funeral next door, eulogizing him to his face, then - after stepping out for an hour to give him privacy as he closed his own casket and swallowed a couple handfuls of prescription painkillers - then followed his written instructions for creating him; when the future was so uncertain, and there was no guarantee that any of us would grow up or grow old.

Gather ye rosebuds.

 

Louise and Rudy give me hope. With everything else gone; with nothing left of the civilization and culture that produced us and gave context to our lives; with seven billion fresh human corpses littering the face of our mourning (yet, let's face it, probably quite relieved) Mother Earth - all that remains to give meaning to our lives, the only real reason to live, is love.

OK, yes, I’m a romantic, and yes, this is purple prose. But I believe it with all that’s left of my heart. Love may not be, as John Lennon sang, _all_ you need. But it is the thing that, more than any other quality, makes us human, makes us redeemable as a species (if, indeed we are), makes it worth the struggle to survive.

 

_Sweet Jesus, I love my family so much. We have to survive. We have to see this through._

 

That much said, and as happy as I am for Louise, I’m also insanely jealous. I don’t have anyone to share _my_ bed, I’m still a total virg, and every boy that was ever interested in me romantically is dead.

 

[Panic attack. Room-spinning dizzy-spell. Brief trip to mom’s wine stash, and a couple of chugs. There. Much better. Moving on...]

 

Jimmy Jr.: dead. Josh: dead. Zeke, who I went farther with than anyone else (second base) (pathetic): dead.

I can’t get my head around it.

As traumatic as my last moments with Jimmy Jr. were, it was Zeke’s death that actually hurt the most.

We’d been sort of unofficially dating for a few months. Nothing too serious - just hanging out, enjoying each other’s company, and making out whenever we had enough privacy.

The last time we made out, about a week before the plague hit, we took it to the next level. I’ll never forget the feeling of his rough but tender hands on my breasts, under my shirt, then under my bra, experimenting to find just the right combination of stimuli to make me melt in his arms.

I don’t think he knew it - I just shuddered a bit, nothing too wild - but I actually came twice that night, just from his caresses and his passionate, adoring kisses on my neck.

God, I wanted to return the favor somehow, but he said we’d gone far enough for the moment. That we should proceed slowly, gradually exploring each other’s bodies and nervous systems so that when we finally made love, it would be magnificent. A masterpiece.

As I was learning every day, there was more to Zeke than met the eye.

When disaster struck, Zeke was in South Carolina visiting family. I soon stopped getting phone calls from him and feared the worst, but there was too much - all of it too horrible - going on right outside my door to spare the matter much thought. I said goodbye to him in my mind, and focused on my own survival, my own fight against the death of my own psyche.

Three months later, as the chaos and panic gripping our little town was reaching a crescendo, Zeke returned. I was so shocked and excited to see him in the doorway that as I threw my arms around him I failed to notice how wan was his usual, rakish grin.

“Zeke! Oh God, this is amazing - I thought I’d never see you again, I...”

Then I saw it. His eyes... his eyes...

I collapsed. I didn’t faint; it’s just that all the bits of scotch tape and chewing gum that were just barely holding me together suddenly lost their adhesion. I hit the floor, and shattered into a million pieces.

Somehow, Zeke - who had come by to let me know he was dying but wound up comforting _me -_ gathered up all the shards and reassembled me. He took me in his arms carried me upstairs. I was his bride, and he was carrying me over a curiously long, extended threshold, the other side of which he would never reach.

I spent the next 24 hours with him, mostly on the beach, watching the tide come in, the sun set, the moon rise and set, and the sun rise again. I'd brought food, but he didn’t want to eat - it smacked of a death row prisoner’s last meal.

I practically begged to make love to him - to consummate our desire and, well, give him a big send-off. But that, too, made him uncomfortable. Too melodramatic, too likely to deepen the bond between us just as he was about to leave this world. It would just make it hurt worse.

And there was the possibility that his transformation would start while we were in the middle of the act. He didn’t want me to live out the rest my life associating that moment of horror with something as joyous as sex.

We talked about his life. Well, I listened to him talk about it. He told me his life story - in chronological order, narrating with charm and insight. His own personal biopic, narrated by Morgan Freeman. Well, except for the drawl.

And it was indeed worthy of a biopic - and not a cheap, made-for-TV movie, either - a full theatrical release. I was fascinated. I was enthralled.

 

And, forgive me, Zeke, I don’t remember any of it. It just didn’t upload into my long term memory. I didn’t want it to. I didn’t want to carry with me, for the rest of my life, the memory of what an extraordinary person he was, how much lay beneath his redneck surface.

Wasn’t it enough that I was losing yet another friend?

Someday I’ll get myself hypnotized and see if his life story is hiding in the deep recesses of my brain, and I’ll write it all down, and tell everyone. For now, I’m nursing too many active regrets to take on another one.

 

Around 10 am, it started. Zeke grinned at me and for a moment actually relaxed. Waiting for hours, not knowing when the dreaded change would strike, had been agonizing for him. Finally, it was settled. It was time to die. _Fuck it. Let’s do this, already. I'm a busy man._

As we had agreed, I grabbed the syringe and the large vial Zeke had retrieved from a nearby hospital the previous morning. It was a very large syringe. I filled it completely, with 200mg of morphine.

I caressed Zeke’s face. I don’t know if he noticed - the pain was clearly becoming intense.

 _What are you waiting for?_ I demanded of myself. _He’s suffering! Put him out of his misery!_

_Kill him!_

 

My left arm shook as I gripped the syringe. I steadied it through brute willpower. He was starting to convulse. I gripped his arm with my right hand, steadying it enough to carry out the injection.

 

_I’m not hurting him. I’m helping him._

**_You’re killing your friend._ **

_I’m easing his pain. If I don’t do this, he’ll die slowly, in agony. I’m doing the right thing._

_There. The convulsions are dying down. He’s calm. He’s out of pain. He’s floating away, gently._

**_He’s dying, and you killed him._ **

_It’s the right thing to do. I know that._

_**Oh, DO you?**  _

_Shut up._

_I also know I’ll never recover from this._

**_Right here, right now, Tina Belcher, you are living through the moment that will haunt you until they toss you in the ground an cover you with dirt. You will never be at peace. Look at Zeke -_ ** **he’s** **_at peace now. You should be so lucky._**

**_Welcome to the end of all things, Tina. The living envy the dead._ **

_Shut up shut up shut up! You want me to think you’re my conscience, but you’re not. You’re the devil, the little kernel of evil and self-loathing that lives in all of us. You're a liar. Get out of my psyche, you sick cunt! I just did the bravest, most painful, most..._ loving _thing I’ve ever done, and you will never convince me otherwise._

_**Sure. Keep telling yourself that.** _

_Go away! Go fuck yourself with a serrated dildo!_

_Don’t make me come in there!_

 

I snapped out of it.

 

 _This is it,_ I thought, _I'm losing it_. _I’m going genuinely, clinically insane_.

And I wasn’t so sure that was a bad thing.

 

Zeke lay motionless in the sand. I checked for a heartbeat. Nothing.

I stroked his hair, and leaned down to kiss his cheek.

I stared out at the ocean, as motionless as my love, for an indeterminate time, trying with all my might to cry. I needed it. I needed the catharsis. I needed the endorphins.

But I was numb. I watched the tide come in without seeing it. My mind was elsewhere. Somewhere I couldn’t follow it. All I could do is wait for it to return.

I might have sat there forever, unmoving, unfeeling, lost in another dimension, had I not been startled by the sensation of a gentle hand on my shoulder. I turned quickly to determine the identity of its owner.

The man in the white suit and matching white eyepatch gazed down at me with what felt like infinite sympathy. I actually did a genuine double-take. I had long been convinced that Calvin Fischoeder was a stone sociopath. A genial one, to be sure, but then, sociopaths are often charming.

His current kind, sympathetic expression seemed completely out of place. Like clown makeup on a portrait of the Virgin Mary.

I was too exhausted, too grief-stricken, to put up a fight. I’d just been roughly mindfucked, mentally sodomized with a pine cone.

_I choose to accept this Opposite Day moment._

“Mr. Fischoeder,” I murmured. “Um, hi.”

He didn’t return the greeting. Instead, he got straight to the point. “You did the right thing,” he said, “which in this case happens to be one of the hardest things in the world. You’re very brave.”

Who was this man and what had he done with Calvin Fischoeder?

“Uh, thanks, I guess,” I said.

“You and this young man were very close,” he said. It was a statement, not a question.

“He’s... he was my boyfriend.”

Mr. Fischoeder did not reply, but simply looked at me warmly again, and let me process whatever I must have been visibly working out in my head.

Eventually, he said “Tina Belcher, correct?” I nodded. “How is your family? All well, I hope.”  
  
“Yeah,” I said. “We’re really lucky. I don’t know what I’d do if we lost anyone. I don’t think I could go on.”

“You’d be surprised. People are very resilient. But I’m glad you haven't had to find out.” He extended his hand, offering to help me up. “Come, I’ll walk you home.”

I stood, then froze immediately. “Wait! What about Zeke? I can’t just leave him here.”

I had no idea how to handle the matter, and I couldn’t detach - I was no longer numb. The one-eyed bastard had engaged my emotions, damn him. I panicked - and regressed.

For the first time in almost two years, I lost the power of speech and expressed my fight or flight response through rhythmic exhalations “Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh! Huh!“

Fischoeder observed the spectacle with equanimity. He was unfamiliar with this type of behavior, but not easily nonplussed. Once it became clear that waiting it out was not working, he addressed me.

 “Tina... Tina... Tina.” he repeated, calmly. Again he put his hand on my shoulder.

That was enough to bring me back to reality. His eyes found mine and locked on. He had my attention.

“My dear, you needn't concern yourself with that. I have seen the people transporting the dead to the graves in the schoolyard. I will alert one of them, and they will take care of it.”

_They’ll drag him to Wagstaff and toss him in a mass grave. Not so much as a headstone to tell the world that he had lived. No obituary in the paper to describe how wonderful he was._

_Unacceptable!_

  
I don’t remember the walk home, or anything else that day. I was gone. The last thought I had, as Calvin Fischoeder took my hand to lead me home was: _Note to self: ask this_ _man about his personality change. I have to figure out what’s wrong - or, rather, what’s right - with him._


	3. Chapter 3

Once a week there's a town meeting in the Wharf Arts complex, where residents can update the community on their progress and setbacks, and brainstorm solutions to the many dire problems facing us. Almost everyone attends, and the sight of how little of the auditorium is filled on those occasions is breathtaking. At the time, our total population was under 150 and shrinking.

I go to every meeting to keep up with what’s going on locally and hear whatever news anyone has gleaned about the larger world.

But I have to admit I don’t pay very much attention to all that. Mostly, I’m on the prowl, looking for a boy my age, new in town, worth having a relationship with. So far, no luck. But I keep hoping I’ll see a new face in the crowd next time.

I’m also beginning to think I could consider an older man. But I’m not sure I could really bond with someone more than a few years older than me.

I don’t know. The whole thing drives me crazy. Every night (and most mornings and afternoons), I lie in my bed and listen to Rudy and Louise having what sounds like truly amazing sex - which is pretty impressive considering their youth and inexperience - in the next room. I try not to be a voyeur, but I can’t help it. I lie there lonely and horny and hopeless - which I hardly need on top of coping with the current extinction-level event.

And I can’t even do anything with that sexual energy. The idea of getting off to the sound of my 13-year-old sister having sex is just too weird.

Sometimes put on my headphones and listen to loud music. But even then, I know what's going on in the next room. I mean, good for her - I would never begrudge her the slightest scrap of joy in the middle of this nightmare.

But as much as I’ve tried, as I’ve grown up, to purge myself of my boy-craziness and to value my own strength and independence, I can’t deny it - I need a man in my life. Not to validate me - I have complete confidence in who I am, and in my value as a human being. But I need romance. I need intimacy. I need a deep human connection.

I need to get laid.

Hey, cool. See, I managed not to think of all of that horrible stuff for a few minutes; all it took was thinking about my sex life (or lack thereof).

Crap - ugly thoughts returning. Why don’t I move on to Gene? Focus... focus...

 

So, Gene.

I think Gene is the least changed of any of us by the events of the past month. He’s not oblivious - he’s lost as many friends and loved ones as any of us, and spent as many hours huddled together with the rest of us, crying and screaming, clinging to each other against our infinite grief.  
  
And while the experience has palpably muted his usual ebullience, he is still a font of jokes, absurd statements, and fart appreciation. I don’t know if he really is that centered, or he’s just maintaining a facade of silliness to help keep the rest of us from going under.

Either way, he’s my hero.

And I envy him as much as I do Louise, maybe more. He and a group of his surviving friends (there's that phrase again, Goddammit) and acquaintances have moved into the perennially empty unit next door and entered into a sort of group marriage arrangement.

To the complete surprise of absolutely no one, he came out as bi- about a year ago. He currently has a boyfriend, a kid named Scott I’d never met before he turned up next door; and a couple of girlfriends - Courtney, who is practically a completely different person - a much more mature and centered one - than she was a year ago; and, of all people, Jocelyn, whose brain seems to have finally come online, the trauma of the past month, the shock to her system, causing it to boot up. Would you believe she’s actually kind of smart?

But she’s also in a constant state of panic. Before, she had never experienced anything deeply. She barely even grazed the surface of life. Now she was paying attention, and experiencing deep, powerful emotions - a capability she gained at the worst possible time. She’s pretty much in Hell. But Gene - patient, compassionate, kind, and a fellow of infinite jest - is walking her through it. Who knew he had a nurturing side? He’ll be a wonderful wife and mother someday.

_Wow. I just made myself chuckle. Maybe I’m not completely dead inside. Please, God, Buddha, Shiva, Flying Spaghetti Monster, whoever - give me my laughter back. Help me smile. Let me feel human again._

 

_And if it’s not too much trouble, find me a boyfriend._

 

Anyway, now, in addition to having Louise and Rudy constantly in the throes of passion on the other side of my bedroom wall, I’ve got my brother and his lovers and their other lovers being all poly and open and occasionally orgiastic next door. I can’t hear it, but I know it’s going on. I can smell the pheromones. And good for him, good for them. But... well, you know the rest. 

It’s a crazy arrangement by the standards of our recently deceased society, and Mom and Dad are deer in the headlights where Gene’s new lifestyle is concerned. But really, it’s the end of the world. Once the food runs out and the grid goes down, it’s going to be a fight for survival - a struggle that will likely last the rest of our lives. Why not carpe as many diems as you can in the meantime, and live in hedonistic bliss?

I know what you’re thinking: I should go over there and join in the festivities, But think about it - my brother is of sort of the leader, the organizer, the epicenter, of the whole endeavor. He’s got three significant others and couple of fuck-buddies over there. There’s no way I could stay out of Gene’s orbit. And again, that would just be too weird.

So, to summarize:

Gene: doing as well as anyone could under the circumstances. Good for him.

Also, fuck him (gently) for having so much of what pains me so deeply to lack.

  


GENE:

OK, I gotta step in here for a minute. I don’t want you to get the impression that my roommates and I are spending every waking moment fucking each other’s brains out. I’d say it’s more like a quarter. Some days more like a third. And a lot of us are spending an inordinate amount of time playing video games, but come on - as Tina said, how long can the electrical grid hold out?

Carpe diem indeed.

But the fact is, we’re all focusing most of our energy on contributing to the efforts to rebuild what’s left of our community. I mean, we’re teenagers - none of us has any practical knowledge or experience in any profession relevant to the effort, which is why, _Tina,_  we’re spending endless hours in the library, learning everything we can about farming, fishing, alternative energy sources (we can power this town with solar!) and the skills necessary to maintain the local infrastructure - plumbing, building maintenance, etc. Teddy can’t be everyplace at once, and he can’t live forever, though not devouring Dad’s burgers and fries every single day should extend his lifespan considerably.

We’ve also spent a great deal of time going around, finding crawlers, putting them out of their misery, taking them to the mass grave site, and helping each other deal with the devastating effect of it all on our psyches. I’ve killed (no, euthanized, dammit) 53 people so far, including 11 acquaintances and 4 dear friends. Each one will haunt me forever, and I will never be the same. How could I be, when I’ve personally put bullets in the skulls of my friends Darryl, Andy Pesto (Tina, please don’t tell Ollie; I could never look him in the eyes again), Len... Lenny DeStefano...

[OK, My turn to freak out... hold on...]

...Lenny DeStefano, and (I’m sorry you have to know this), Josh.

I spend a lot of time lying awake at night, trying to figure out who I am, who I have become. I’m clinging with all I’ve got to my “youthful insouciance,” as Tina calls it, but it feels like hanging from the edge of a cliff by my eyebrows.

 

Three long paragraphs, you’ll notice, and not one fart joke. Mother of God, is this the end of Gene Belcher?

 

So, _Tina,_  if we _are_ spending a lot of time fucking each other silly, maybe it’s because we need it. I mean, yeah, it’s exciting and fun and awesome and holy shit, sex with other people is incredible. You. Have. No. Idea. (Sorry about that.)  

But it’s also our only real escape from the soul-crushing shitshow that is life during the apocalypse. Give us a damn break.

And if you’re obsessing over our sexual practices these days, well, I’ve got a prescription: find a dick attached to someone who doesn’t nauseate you, and do with it what you will. I know you’re holding out for a dreamy young guy, and I’m rooting for you, but beggars can’t be choosers. Scratch that itch, girlfriend!

Seriously, I hope you find someone to love, but in the meantime, do a little dance, make a little love, get down tonight.

That’s the weather, back to you, Steve.

  
TINA

Alright. Fair enough. And thank you for your service.

And thank you for telling me about Josh. That he’s gone breaks my heart - no, tears it to shreds, devours it, and shits it out. But but the fact that you, Large Brother, were the one who put him to rest, that you were willing to take on the burden of the memory of that act... you are my hero. I love you so much.

  
GENE

Back atcha, sis. OK, gotta go. Jocelyn is freaking out.

 

TINA

So: Mom and Dad. What can I say?

First of all, thank God, Allah, the Great Pumpkin, whoever, that they’ve both survived. I don’t think either could face life without the other, any more than Ollie can face life without Andy. They seem to keep themselves sane by annoying each other with the habits and quirks they’ve always clashed over. It keeps them tethered, but I get the sense that Mom, at least, is just going through the motions, role-playing, unconvincingly, the person she used to be.

The most disturbing thing is that she’s stopped breaking into song. She hasn’t sung a syllable since it all started, and only now do I realize how much I loved that supremely annoying habit of hers. It was embarrassing, but, in retrospect, life-affirming. And I’ve never needed my life affirmed like I do now.

I suppose that goes without saying in a world strewn with billions of freshly rotting corpses, and untold thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, of stragglers, crawling toward the mercy of grave.

[Fuck. Excuse me while I crack open another bottle of wine. I’m clearly not numb enough to keep this up, yet. Give me like half an hour.]

 

[Two hours later]

Yeaaaaaaah. That’s what _I’m_ talkin’ about. I finally get what Mom sees in this stuff. I may even switch to hard liquor soon.

For the moment, though, I should probably slow down, start using a glass.

 

Anyhoo, Mom and Dad.

While Mom is in a fog of grief and alcohol-assisted disorientation, Dad is... reborn.

At first, without his restaurant -- his passion, his life’s work -- he was lost, confused, shut down. Probably a good thing, as it made him kind of numb to the extinction-level event playing out all around him.

In fact the only individual death that got to him was, incomprehensibly, Jimmy Pesto Sr.’s. When Ollie moved in, he mentioned - casually, in passing - that his father was dead. We expected Dad to gloat - or at least struggle not to gloat in front of Ollie.

Instead, he excused himself, went to his bedroom, and sobbed uncontrollably. You’d have thought he’d lost his _own_ father (Grandpa had actually passed away a year earlier. Miraculously, he and dad managed to reconcile during Big Bob’s mercifully brief bout with pancreatic cancer).

He was inconsolable. He tried to engage with Ollie to commiserate, and comfort him over the loss of his father, but Ollie was barely present, caught in the waking nightmare of life without his twin. He had no grief to spare for anyone else, even his beloved older brother.

And the truth was, Ollie didn’t give a shit about his dad. By the time he was 11, he had figured out that Jimmy Pesto, Sr. was one of the town’s leading sociopaths (until recently, I thought he was neck and neck with Calvin Fischoeder), and had no tender feelings for his sons whatsoever - something Jimmy Jr., for all his conflicts with the man, never accepted.

As for Dad’s reaction, I think I get it. He hated the man - still does and always will. But I think he was going through a weird, twisted version of Ollie’s loss. James Pesto, Sr. was his nemesis, his tormentor... his _evil twin_. As much as Dad had wished every day for the man to get run over by a delivery truck, or drown in his own flavorless marinara sauce, or be assassinated by Joe Bastianich for the crime of selling terrible, sub-Olive Garden level imitation Italian food, they were forever linked. Ahab and the Whale, genuine and phony, nice guy and asshole, Jehovah and Satan, Andy Kaufman and Jerry Lawler, Tupac and Biggie. Skeksis and UrRu.

 

Bugs and Daffy.

 

I think Jimmy was as fundamental an element of his old life as us, his family and, spared the loss of his dearest loved ones, losing his greatest rival brought home to him the reality of the unimaginable loss going on around him. And it all poured out of him at that moment.

And in a weird way, I think he did genuinely mourn Jimmy Pesto. The guy was jerk and a creep and had no soul. But that _is_ one kind of person. And people were becoming a rare commodity.

Someday he and I will have a conversation about it. For now, we all have other fish to fry - if we can catch some.

  


GENE

Ba dum-bum.

  
TINA

A drum hit without a dog bark? You’ve changed, man.

  
GENE

The dog bark was implied!

  
TINA

To continue...

 

After that peculiar catharsis, and about a week spent mostly sleeping it off, Dad rose, transformed.

His previous life’s work was dead - or at least pining for the fjords. But the new world offered new challenges, and Robert Zachary Belcher (he hates his middle name. I only know it because I’ve seen his birth certificate) would rise to the challenge. He would lead. He would pull Seymour’s Bay through the current crisis. He would not let it succumb to the encroaching Dark Age. Word would spread the little seaside town that refused to die. Seymour’s Bay would be a shining beacon of hope to all who wandered the Earth (well, OK, the tri-state area) looking for a safe harbor. Somewhere to belong. The thousands of empty houses around us would be filled with life again.

Seymour’s Bay might just be the new capital of the United States. And he would be the (self-appointed) mayor.

Now, I don’t want to give you the idea that my father’s personality has changed, as Calvin Fischoeder’s seems to have. He didn’t suddenly become dynamic and charismatic. Dad is laconic as ever, and outside of familial safe-spaces, his charisma rates somewhere between Spiro Agnew and a depressed, post-2000 election, bearded Al Gore.

But he is on a mission, an unstoppable force careening toward an unmovable object, thinking “Pshht. I can move that fucker.”

He organizes and runs those community meetings at the Wharf Arts Center. He determines what needs to be done in what order, and assigns the right people to the right jobs.

More than that, once business is done with, he leads his constituents in a sort of group therapy. People talk about their lives - their fears, their grief, their survivor’s guilt. Former strangers, even former antagonists, become friends, bonding over their shared trauma.

Because, truly, what meaning or significance did their differences or conflicts have, compared to the enormity of the events of the past year?

Among those who survived when many or all of their relatives did not, families of choice formed.

Almost everyone moved or is moving to our Ocean Drive neighborhood, which is becoming full of life and activity and purpose, like the old days. And Bob Belcher is making it happen!

  
Oh my God.

I’m just now realizing that I, myself, have been in a fog, overwhelmed by my recent experiences (and who wouldn’t be). There really is hope. There really is life left in this little town, and surely in places all over the world as well. Anywhere people remain and gather together to form communities, and to rebuild what has been lost.

I love my little town, and everyone in it - even the people I hate. We are strong. We have depths we have never explored. We have been forged in fire and come out strong as steel. We have come through the end of all things to discover it is not truly the end.

We are awesome.

We are human.

We will survive and rebuild and find new ways to live and connect with others across the continent and even the globe, and - Flying Spaghtti Monster willing - we will live to see the rise of Civilization 2.0.

And, of all people, Bob. Fucking. Zachary. Belcher. will lead us there.

 

Well, how about that? In vino veritas, my brethren and sistren.

I’ll drink to that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to turn this thing around and make the jump from horror to science fiction (It's not very science-fictiony yet, beyond the post-apocalyptic setting, but I believe that will change a bit). 
> 
> Ultimately, though, this story is about love and grief and hope and trauma and survival and community and, now that I think of it, what a great family the Belchers are and how that is the key to their survival. 
> 
> The stakes almost infinitely higher in this setting, of course -- but I think that makes it interesting.
> 
> Also, to those who came here for the Zombie Apocalypse, do not despair - Armageddon is not done with Seymour's Bay yet. It's never that easy.


	4. Chapter 4

LOUISE

OK, sis. Well done. Way to end the prologue on an up note.

But you kinda jumped the gun because we haven't gotten to _my_ , the most _important_ , part.

 

GENE

Yeah - and I only got like an aside in the middle of one of your sections. I demand more column-inches!

 

LOUISE

That's what _she_ said. [snork!]

  


GENE

What makes you assume it was a “she”?!

 

  
TINA

[Sigh] Fine, Gene, why don't you go now?

  


LOUISE

Hey!

  


TINA

We'll save the best for last, OK?

  


LOUISE

Yeah, well, as long as that's clear.

  


TINA

So, Gene?

  


GENE

  
  


LOUISE

Gene, it’s your turn. Come on!

  


GENE

Nah, I'm good.

  


TINA

Oh my god.

 

Fine. Louise, you're up.

  


LOUISE

Gimme a sec. I need to get back in the mood.

Just... Let's just do a chapter break, OK?

  


TINA

Sure. Hold on...

  
  


...and we're live in 3, 2, [hand gesture]


	5. Chapter 5

LOUISE

I thought I was tough.

I mean, I _am_ tough. I’ll cut you. But am I tough enough for this? Can I keep my cool through the Not-Quite-Zombie but Definitely-For-Real-Apocalypse?

I don’t know. I _think_ so. Nine months so far and I haven’t lost my shit. But here’s the thing: I know in my heart that I’d be dead without Rudy - dead inside, or just another corpse wrapped in plastic, tossed on a pile of other losers, waiting to be covered by a mound of dirt.

Rotting away. One way or another.

Rudy is my rock. His little (well, regular-sized), asthmatic, omni-allergic, fragile body contains the heart of a lion. He can barely climb two flights of stairs, but he is the strongest person I know.

I’ve loved him - and I only realized this recently - since elementary school. Since before “like-like” was in my or any of my classmate’s repertoires; before I had any idea what romantic love was; before my long-dreaded puberty asserted itself, and he entered my earliest fantasies, and I finally understood why people were so obsessed with finding someone else to make theirs real.

I even - no, I especially - understood _Tina_. Well, I don’t think I’ll ever get what her butt obsession is all about, but hey, whatever floats your scrote, as Zeke says.

Used to say. Crap.

But yeah, it finally all made sense, and after a week or so of tentative explorations of the functionality of my updated private parts firmware, I dove in, getting thoroughly familiar with my new best friend and what she could do for me.

The next morning I got up, wolfed down my breakfast, and ran - sprinted - over to Rudy’s place.

I skipped hello and I told him I loved him.

I'll never forget how his eyes bugged out, his jaw dropped, and his gaping mouth slowly changed shape, widening into a smile that threatened to split his head in half. He even teared up a bit - tears of joy, but also of relief.

 _Finally!,_ I’m sure he was thinking. And also, as told me a few seconds later,  _This is the greatest moment of my life._

We embraced powerfully, desperately, trying to merge into one another on almost a molecular level. I worried that Rude might pass out from lack of oxygen. But he was fine, running on adrenaline and testosterone as we both experienced our first real kiss.

It was epic. I’m not sure how long it lasted, but by the time it ended, _I_ was gasping for air.

Rudy started to say something, but he quickly forgot what, because I was practically ripping his clothes off right there in the foyer. Why wait to go upstairs to his room when there was a perfectly comfortable couch ten feet away in the den?

Look, as anyone who knows me is aware, I don’t fuck around. If Rudy hadn’t balked, I’d have deflowered him (and vice versa) right then and there. But even with a guy that loves your strength and passion and sheer force of will, there’s such a thing as coming on too strong. Rushing in where angels fear to tread (as they should, lest they get knocked up with little angel babies. Maybe that's where cherubs come from).

So, for his sake, we took it slow. Way slow.

Infuriatingly slow.

We started with long makeout sessions, kissing until our mouths were numb. We moved on to combining that with him feeling me up. Over my clothes at first, then under. We gradually increased the intensity of that activity. Getting from A to B took about 12 weeks.

If anyone else had tested the limits of my patience so severely, they would have wound up at Mort's, being prepared for a closed-casket funeral.

It was at that point that we - OK, I - hit the wall. Rudy was not ready to go any further. One night, I started to give him a handie, and he jumped back like it was a giant spider that had just gripped his dick.

I made a few more attempts over the next week, then dropped it. Despite my tender prodding, he just couldn’t make the leap to the big leagues.

And for the record, I know I was being insane and irresponsible. I was seriously contemplating - lobbying for - becoming sexually active at 13. Rudy obviously wasn’t ready; and it was actually kind of creepy of me to be pressuring him to do it, however gently.

And yes, I know, there's no way I was ready, either. I mean for fuck’s sake, when I first tried to jump him, I’d made the acquaintance of my own sexuality only a week before. Sure, she and I got really close really fast, a whirlwind romance; but no way was I ready to take her out for a test drive.

But I was blind to those considerations. All I knew was that I had a new toy, and I wanted to share it with the man I loved (and technically he _was_ a man, at least according the Jewish faith, having been bar mitzvahed three months earlier).

 _Just give it a little more time,_ I thought. _It won’t be long before his horniness overpowers his timidity._

But his timidity was no pushover. Another month stalled out on Lover’s Lane, and I was ready to accept that Triple-A wasn’t coming, and it would be years before we consummated our relationship. Which, from a responsibility standpoint, was probably for the best.

Then the world ended.

Tina has already covered the most important details about the progression of the Alien Plague (yeah, I “drank the Kool-Aid,” Tina - don't bother trying to talk me down), and I'd rather not get into the gories myself. 

But since Rudy’s dad was one of the first people in town to get it, I’ve spent every moment of every day for the past years living in fear of the moment I’d look into my Rudy’s eyes and see all those pretty colors.

I mean, I’d already spent years stressed out about his asthma attacks. But let’s face it - they don’t make an emergency inhaler for the Alien Plague (or if they do, the fact is being suppressed by the Evil Aliens who control the Media).

 

TINA

Louise...

 

LOUISE

Sheesh, Tina, I was just joking. There is no Media anymore, remember?

Anyway, they figured out pretty quickly that resistance to the plague was mostly genetic, so all I could think about for months was that I was going to lose Rudy, and when would it happen, and would I have the balls to put him out of his misery myself, and was that really my job, and yes it was, and whether I did the deed or not could I live without him and and and...?

When he moved in with us, I insisted that he sleep in my room - on the floor, I added, quickly. I didn’t trust anyone else to protect him from the mystery illness there was no protection from. I promised myself that we would just talk, maybe hold hands. I wouldn’t even press him to make out; I wanted him to feel completely safe.

So I was genuinely shocked when, as soon as we closed my bedroom door behind us that morning, he was all over me.

That, by the way, is where this scene ends. I want to tell our story, but I’m not going to provide child porn for posterity’s pedo perverts. I don’t even need to inform you that Rude and I are amazing in bed - a fact obvious to anyone within hearing range of my bedroom - thanks to Tina’s oversharing.

Other than that, Tina has done all the heavy lifting here. Horror, shock, terror, despair, loss upon loss upon loss... I feel bad for not paying as much attention as I should have to all that, being completely obsessed with the well-being of a single person. And during those beautiful, blissful few minutes Rude and I have together several times a day, even the background hum of the apocalypse fades away, and it’s just about us.

Outside of those times, we’re young lovers poised against the backdrop of The End of the World and the struggle for survival - which sounds all romantic until you catch sight of a crawler and you remember the sheer, pathetic, no-words-suffice awfulness of the manner of our destruction. I don’t think struggles for survival are ever actually romantic as they sound in fiction. Was living through the Dustbowl romantic? Was World War I romantic (unless you’re a sick, self-annihilating genius like Hemmingway)? But it’s fun to let that feeling wash over you once in a while.

One experience I haven’t been oblivious to or sheltered from all this time is the Reality-Check moment. We all experience it pretty frequently. Tina described one a little while ago, but I want to expand on it.

Even all these months later, with work to be gotten on with and the new normal being all too familiar, I get it once or twice a day, minimum. That moment when you look up and remember all you’ve been through, all that’s happened, and you see the basic facts of your new life through the perspective of the old.

Anyone with any sense always understood that disaster could strike at any time. That the thing you never really believed could happen to you could very well be in your future - a fire, an auto accident, an earthquake, a hostage situation. The last pre-apocalypse generation of American kids grew up with active shooter drills in their schools - which were about as reassuring as “Duck and Cover” in the 50s and 60s.

But this is different. This is agonizing, grotesque end of civilization as we knew it. Not a disaster movie, but a dark science-fiction epic.

So you look up and see your familiar neighborhood around you, looking like barely anything has changed. And you try to assimilate the fact that 7+ billion people have died, including almost everyone you ever knew. And you can’t. It’s impossible.

So you think: it can’t be real. I’ve got to be dreaming - or... something. So you examine your environment as closely as possible, checking the tiniest details, looking for a glitch in the matrix, or something not quite consistent with the “real world.”

But it’s no use - this is real. It really happened. Is happening. Most of humanity gone, most of our cities and towns empty. The skies bereft of flying machines (that’s the one that gets you; you realize how strange it is to see a truly empty sky).

Our satellites are still up there, but you can’t see them.

Holy shit, what happened to the astronauts on the International Space Station?

There’s no escape: all of this post-apocalyptic fiction fodder - all of this stuff that Doesn’t. Actually. Happen. - not really, except in the movies... is real. And you’re soaking in it. You get dizzy, your heart jumps then sinks like a stone. Your brain tries to escape out your ears.

It’s all gone. This is how the world ends.

Then the feeling passes, and you get on with your life. You’ve survived - for the moment - the worst thing ever. But you still have something to live for: your lover, your children, your community. If you’re lucky enough to have a talent, maybe you live for that - you have to tell the story of us all, through song, story, poetry, film, illustration... interpretive fucking dance, anything.

That’s why Tina, Gene and I are telling you all of this. This is our contribution. If the species survives, this story right here will be among the legends of the Re-birth. Civilization 2.0, as Tina calls it.

So pay attention.

Or I’ll cut you.

 

(Man, would you listen to me? I’m sounding more like Tina every day. And she’s a great writer, for reals. But I think I want to find my own style, my own influences. Maybe read a bunch of Bukowski or something.)

<end Prologue, folks>


End file.
